Finnegan’s teeth: artists book and public art project

Finnegan’s Teeth is a visual journey seen through the eyes of the animal Finnegan. Taking place around King’s Cross in London, it follows the area as it goes through construction and deconstruction. Photographs of the happenings and events that Finnegan notices on his travels accompany the voices of the street life around him.
• Finnegan’s Teeth, the book, developed into a major public Art project on the edge of the Kings Cross regeneration site. The happenings and events of Finnegan’s experiences are placed back into the spaces from which they came.
Finnegan, the dog, is the only named narrator, as he reveals a bizarre world in the giant images and text which now appear on an installation in the historic Fish & Coal Building, on hoardings in Goods Way and on Maiden Lane canal bridge.
• The episodes, based on real encounters, are spoken by different voices on the street. The absurd is a point of departure, experienced alongside something rational. Something strange happens as these re-told tales return to their place of origin making the ordinary become extraordinary.
Narrative has always been important in Judith Cowan’s work, and this book, with its cover to cover sequence of photographs and interspersed texts, creates a duration that is rarely achievable with still images.
• Finnegan’s bizarre world appeared in giant images and text on installations in the historic Fish & Coal Building, on hoardings on Goods Way and by Regent’s Canal under York Way.
• Curated by Gill Hedley (past director of Contemporary Art Society) and Project Managed by Joseph Hill.
• The website for the project www.finnegansteeth.info includes a short edit of the film about the project made by Hub TV.
‘Finnegan’s Teeth’ selected for the Tina B. Festival (2010) in Prague, Czech Republic, by its director Monica Burian, appeared in ‘Tina B on the Road’. The new installation covered the walls of a room in the Czech Centre with a photographic image taken from an animal’s perspective and a human conversation in large text. Doorways, light switches and sockets were cut out of the actual image, enabling the room to continue to function. In the middle of the animal’s vision sat a solitary wooden bench for reading the book. The Hub TV documentary of ‘Finnegan’s Teeth’ (London) by Renee Vaughan Sutherland was shown in an adjacent space.

Book published by Research Group for Artists Publications (RGAP).